


Scars

by shipcestuous (x4ashes4ashes)



Category: Dark (TV 2017)
Genre: Brother/Sister Incest, Canon Compliant, F/M, Missing Scene, One Shot, lonely people that need to be touched, rabid shipper declares incest show needs more incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25367443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x4ashes4ashes/pseuds/shipcestuous
Summary: Silja visits Jonas shortly after she arrives in 1890.
Relationships: Jonas Kahnwald/Silja Tiedemann
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	Scars

**Author's Note:**

> Between watching the final season and working on my [ _Dark_ commentary for my blog](https://shipcestuous2.wordpress.com/2020/07/14/dark-part-i-iii/), my Jonas/Silja feelings exploded and I had to write this. (Any of my readers not familiar with the show will find all they need to know there.) Unless I've made any mistakes, this fic is compliant with the canon of the show, though I had to make some decisions about various things never clarified for the audience, particularly what Adam might have told Silja before sending her back in time and what Jonas might have learned from Noah and Claudia.

****

**1890**

Silja hadn't intended to make a secret of presence, but she found her footsteps light and stealthy as she pushed open the door to the laboratory and slipped inside. The sun had set – there was no blast of daylight to catch the corner of his eye; he worked on, undisturbed. Noticing the whisper of lantern light through the high windows, she had known he was still here. Silja had been lurking around the compound all day, gathering information – more so out of curiosity than necessity. Bartosz had already retired to the dormitories – she had watched him leave the lab with a frustrated gait and cross the grounds into a second building. Tannhaus, the owner, had taken his carriage back to his estate or his house in town in the early evening, and the others – Magnus and Franziska – were laughing by the fire in the kitchen.

She tiptoed closer; his back was towards her as he adjusted levers and jotted down notes. The familiar but still unsettling mass of black ether writhed and splashed as it floated in front of them, occasionally twisting and reforming as it was hit by an experimental jolt of energy. The first time she had ever seen it had been with him. The portal, the God particle. Elisabeth had told her it was a part of the devil.

Silja stepped out of the shadows and into the center of the open space behind him; she glimpsed the profile of his face as he turned to regard his rudimentary radiation helmet, his already grim expression became even grimmer and he pivoted back to his papers dismissively. Another minute passed, and then he blew out the lamp at the desk, and finally spun around and faced her.

Startled, he dropped the lantern he carried, and it crashed and shattered. The room was now illuminated only by an oil lamp hanging from the wall by the door where she had come in; through the dim he stared at her, ignoring the broken glass and spilled oil at his feet.

“I'm sorry,” she said calmly. “I should have announced myself.”

He strode forward, grabbed her just below the shoulders, and forced her several meters backwards into the light of the remaining lamp, an angry confusion hammering across his features. His expression softened slightly as she felt the cast of yellow across her face and his eyes roving over her.

“ _Silja_?” he asked, astonished. Gripping a fistful of her skirt at the waist and then flinging it loose, he declared brutally: “These are the clothes I gave to _her!_ ”

“Jonas,” she replied softly, gazing up at him and taking in this new, older face. “I wasn't sure if you would recognize me. It has been so long.” She added: “For you.” For her it had been only a matter of months – though it felt longer. So much had happened, had changed. That was another life for both of them.

He demanded: “Are you real?” She studied him, furrowing her brow. “You're not the first ghost to appear to me here.”

“I'm no ghost.”

“Are you _my_ Silja?” At her wondering but deeply flattered expression, he elaborated: “Or are you from another world? Like she was?”

“It feels like it,” she replied, looking around at the nineteenth-century equipment and the rough, splintering wood of the building.

He released her and regarded her critically. “Did Adam send you?”

She met his eyes intently. “Yes. You sent me.” He took a wary step backwards. “And yes, I took these clothes from her – from Martha.” She tugged with dissatisfaction at her sleeve. “They're the only ones I have right now.”

He turned away from her and shook his head. “I'm not him. And she's not Martha.” He paused. “What happened to her?”

Silja didn't answer, instead running a hand over her skirt to straighten it from his aggression. “I would apologize,” he said, noticing. “But the first time we met you knocked me out cold with the butt of your rifle.”

“We're even, then,” she said, her mouth curling up into the hint of a smile. He did not return it. “I'm not here out of blind obedience.” When he brought his gaze back to her, she continued: “I'm here because I have to be. Because I always have been. Because I need to fill the gap. So that we can have salvation.”

Jonas nearly rolled his eyes at the word. “If Adam delivers us, it won't be what you're thinking of.” Silja straightened her back, confident. “What did he send you to do?” he asked, sighing, not appearing as if he were sure he could believe what she would say.

“To make my home here. To have a child.” She tilted her head. “I'm your great-great-great grandmother, did you know that?” Jonas stared at her, dumbfounded. “You see I had to come. You wouldn't exist if I didn't.”

“You should have stayed in the future,” he replied darkly. “We would all be better off.”

She didn't say anything, and looked him over. His hair was browner than it had been, with flecks of gray here and there. There were a few wrinkles beneath his eyes, but not too pronounced. His eyes were still a piercing green, barely detectable in the darkness but demanding her attention all the same. The carefully trimmed beard complimented his older face – she still saw the Jonas she knew underneath it, and underneath the changes and the hardness. Above his collar, a ringed scar still marked his hanging. Without thinking, she reached out and grazed her finger over it.

Jonas recoiled slightly and reached up quickly to remove her hand, but stopped himself. She withdrew her arm and felt a heat on her cheeks, contrasting condemningly with the chilly air.

“And who is my great-great-great grandfather, then? Did Adam tell you that?” Jonas asked, the black cloud seeming to have passed for the moment.

“Bartosz.”

Jonas lifted his brow, and for the the first time ever she saw something close to amusement on his face. “I'm descended from Bartosz? He's going to love that.”

“Don't tell him!” Silja interjected quickly. “Adam said he'll be happier if he doesn't know any of it. I'm not even supposed to tell him I'm from the future - only you can know. Our secret,” she said softly.

Jonas regarded her impassively, and then nodded.

“You might enjoy the 1890s,” he said, with a faint note of kindness. “The only place it's an improvement on is the place you came from.” One of his lips quirked up in an almost-smile. “Though I've always remembered you as a warrior. For most of the time I knew you, I was afraid of you. You won't have much need of those skills here.”

“I'm glad,” she said quietly. She inhaled deeply and lifted her head in a nervous, inquisitive fashion. “I _have_ wondered if...if you had ever thought about me...” She avoided his eyes and then met them again quickly. “Ha-have you?” _Or did he only ever think of Martha?_

Jonas regarded her with muted surprise. At first he did not answer, then he admitted: “Yes. Sometimes.”

Silja touched her streaming hair, straightening a lock with her fingers. “I had never met anyone like you. Desperate, defiant. So alive, so passionate. Not like us.”

“I was a naive idiot. Maybe I still am.”

She confessed: “I didn't want you to go. I wanted you to stay.”

Again, Jonas registered surprise, stifled by his uncompromising bleak and weary expression. For the first time, she felt like he really looked at her with interest, really was seeing _her_ , and not just another obstacle to be dealt with, maneuvered, or survived.

Without waiting for his reply, Silja drifted over towards his desk, and then gestured at the God particle. “Just like the one where I come from. You haven't been able to recreate the circuit?”

He followed, slowly. “No. Do you remember the voice on the tapes? Claudia Tiedemann? She was Bartosz's grandmother. It turns out I was there with her, during those experiments. The recordings. But I can't recreate what she did to stabilize it. She...she was deceiving me. Noah warned me, but...I wanted to believe her.” He crossed his arms. “But I know it will work – eventually. I've used it myself, in 1921.”

“I was terrified when you walked through the portal. It felt...wrong. It felt like nothing good could come of it. And then I had to do the same thing, just a couple of days ago.”

“I don't think I ever thanked you. You took quite a risk freeing me and leading me back inside the plant.”

Silja smiled weakly. “It wasn't such a risk. Elisabeth never would have hurt me. She raised me – she loved me.”

“Your parents?” he asked. Silja didn't answer; she was relieved when he respected her reserve and did not press. He watched her stare at the God particle. “It will be good to have you here.” He added: “Good for Bartosz.”

“Adam told me I would love him. It's very strange, being told such a thing. What if I never feel what I'm supposed to feel? Or is that impossible?”

“You can't believe everything Adam tells you. It might all be a manipulation. You may very well never love Bartosz.”

Silja thought about the young man she had met briefly in the forest – handsome, unassuming but transparently hopeful in his prospects with her, run-down by life. There was a new animation in his eye when he looked at her. “I think I will.” She knew she would marry him and have children with him – she already had. Jonas was the proof, standing in front of her.

Jonas' face remained unreadable.

Even after Jonas had left her time - the Jonas she had first met, the Jonas who had crashed into her world and shaken up everything she had always known - she had imagined him staying, imagined what it would have been like if he hadn't been able to get the portal working. If he had joined the militia, and come to live in their camp. If he had given up on undoing the apocalypse, saving his loved ones, all of it, and just lived there with her. What would have happened? Would they have fallen in love? No one had ever excited such an interest in her, and she had felt, on one or two brief occasions, that she had been more than just a means to an end for him.

Elisabeth had always told her that they did not live in a time of love, that it would always end in pain, and that the pain would be too much. She had lost her husband and her daughter, though she had discussed it so little that Silja knew nothing about what had happened to them. Silja had grown up agreeing with her: it was not a time for love. Jonas – that was the first time she had ever wondered if there might be something better than guarding her heart.

He had thought about her sometimes, but she had thought about him often...

As she looked at him now, it didn't seem to matter that he was older. She had wondered if the years on his face would change how she felt, but they didn't. He exhibited none of the qualities that had struck her when they first met – this man was steely, grim, hopeless, angry, - but the thing that had made her feel drawn towards him was still there. It wasn't something she really understood, but it was as real as any of the things in the room she might have pointed to or held in her hands.

“I wonder if I am lucky,” she mused. “What some of the others have been sent to do... But I am going to have a family, to live in this place far removed from all of those...horrors. I'm tired of being...tough.” She was tired of being the girl Elisabeth had raised her to be. Of the girl she had had to be to survive in that time and place.

“Perhaps,” he replied, not sounding very sure. “But I'm afraid there are plenty of horrors to go around.” He had removed the oil lamp from the wall, and he lifted it to her face. “How did you get your scar?”

“Do you think it makes me ugly?”

He let out a single unexpected laugh – she had never seen him laugh, it was perhaps the first time he had laughed in years. Shaking his head, he said, “Hardly.” Silja flushed, a red heat creeping up her throat. He raised his thumb to his neck: “Especially compared to mine.”

“I should have stopped her.”

“It's all right, you couldn't have. She never intended to for me to die, I know that now. And she couldn't have killed me even if she wanted to.”

Silja traced a finger across her cheek. “I crashed on my bicycle.” She frowned at the vague memory.

Jonas let a hint of a smile grace his face. “And here I had been thinking it was a battle scar.”

Silja shook her head. “No, I was only a child.”

A loud thump from outside the laboratory startled her, she jumped into the shadows. “Bartosz can't see me here.”

Jonas was unruffled. “It's only one of Tannhaus' men. Bartosz made it clear to me earlier that he was done for the night.” He shook his head. “Bartosz and I used to be best friends. He hates me now. He blames me, for all of this. I've grown tired of apologizing to him, but maybe it is my fault.”

Adam had directed Silja not only to marry Bartosz, but to push him back towards Jonas, towards the cause. It would be easy: “I saw how hard you tried. How much you wanted to fix it. You weren't the first to travel, you didn't cause the apocalypse. These horrors are not your fault. We're all victims. That's why we need to be saved.”

“And Adam will save us?” he asked with contempt.

“Adam will save us. _You_ will save us.”

He met her eyes keenly, she saw him searching for assurance.

Silja turned for the door. “I should go. I'm staying at the boardinghouse, and the woman who runs it has very particular ideas about what a young woman should and shouldn't do, and especially about how late she should be out.”

Jonas caught her arm as she began to move away. “It's a long walk in the dark. I can find a bed for you here for the night. Bartosz and the others will never know.” He stared at her for a moment, and then confessed: “It feels good to think about something other than the work.” He looked over at the God Particle. “It has been so long since... For so long there has only been the work.”

“All right,” she agreed breathlessly, still surprised from the rapid and firm way he had taken her arm.

He gave her a dark coat and led her across the grounds to the dormitories. The steps to the second level creaked loudly but no one peeked out their heads to look. “Bartosz's room,” he whispered, pointing to a door as they passed by it. They continued on to the end of the hall, passing several more. “This is mine,” he indicated, then he pushed open the door directly across from his: “This room is empty.”

She entered unsurely, barely discerning the bed in the darkness. He went off to retrieve a blanket and a candle for a her, then she lit the candle while he filled a small basin with water from a pitcher and arranged a washcloth and a chamber pot for her. “Will this be all right?” he asked.

Silently, she nodded.

“I'll help you get away unseen in the morning,” he said. “While the others are eating breakfast.”

“Thank you.”

He looked at her with a hard brow. “Did Adam tell you to come see me?”

“He said...that you would enjoy seeing my face. He didn't need to give me instructions, he already knew what I would do. ...That I would come.” She added softly: “Because I wanted to see _you_.”

Without registering any reaction, he vacated the room and shut the door behind him.

Adam had warned her that he would not be as she had remembered him.

Silja stripped down to her chemise and kneeled carefully over the chamber pot – she wasn't quite used to them yet. They might not have had flushing toilets in 2053 but at least they set up proper latrines with toilet seats, or went comfortably in the woods.

Then she used the water Jonas had provided to wash herself. She imagined bathing in the lake nearby – in her time, it had been contaminated, full of debris. It would be comparatively pristine in 1890... Something to look forward to. She hadn't been swimming since...since _before_. She wasn't even sure she could. Maybe Bartosz could take her there, could teach her. Maybe he would kiss her at the lake.

How nice it was, to wonder about such things, instead of eking out survival in the permanent winter she had left behind. She had already felt so much of the tension she had always lived with leaving her body. When she had set down her gun for good, she had known she was about to become a new person. There were many things about this place that intimidated and dismayed her, and she missed Elisabeth, missed the others – but she felt excitement too, about what _could_ be, here, in this time.

Silja put her head against her door and listened for noises in the hallway or from Jonas' room. For signs he was still awake. It was silent, and then she heard steps, as if he were pacing. What was he thinking about? The portal? Adam? Martha? Or her?

She didn't know she would do it until it was happening – she slipped out of her room and across the hall, and knocked discreetly on his door. In the crack underneath she could see the dancing of candlelight. He opened it quickly but uncertainly, not entirely surprised to see her, but not expecting her either. She didn't wait to be invited in, she pushed past him and stood in the center of the small room. “There's something I didn't tell you.”

“What kind of agent of Adam's would you be if you didn't have secrets?” he replied unkindly, shutting the door. For just a second, he regarded her in her thin underdress unsurely.

“I've always intended to tell you,” she defended. “I just hadn't figured out yet how or when I wanted to do it. It might change...how you see me. I wasn't sure if I was ready for that.”

He frowned at her, puzzled but intrigued. “Do you know why Adam said that, about your face?”

“No,” she said quietly. She had hoped...

“The first time I saw you, you reminded me of my mother.” In pain, he bit back the emotion, his teeth digging into his lip. “I saw her when she was only 14, when I traveled to 1986 through the passage, before I met you. She and my grandfather offered me a ride - it was raining. Of course it was raining, this is Winden. You looked so much like her. It was my first thought.”

Silja didn't say anything.

“The last time I saw her, I pushed her away,” he confessed. “Because I was disappointed. I reacted like a child. I was too hard on her.”

“What was she like? Y-your mother?”

Jonas smiled to himself. “Beautiful. Secretive. A liar. Hard sometimes, soft sometimes. She loved fiercely, but she could be vindictive. Selfish. No one ever hugged me as tightly as she did...” His eyes went introspective, and his words dropped off.

Two tears glided down Silja's cheek.

“You had something to tell me?” he asked curtly, bitter after his indulgence in memories.

Silja still wasn't quite ready to say it, but she had to: “Jonas, there's a reason why I remind you so much of your mother,” she began quietly, sitting down on his bed. He waited for her to finish her thought, his brow furrowed in bewilderment. “Hannah Kahnwald is my mother too.”

“What?” He shook his head in disbelief.

“Adam told me, right before I left.”

“She's _your_ mother? How is that possible?” He exhaled heavily: “By now I should know better than to ask that question.”

“She took your device and traveled to live in another time, and I was born. After she died, you sent me to the future. I was only a small child at the time. I don't remember much of any of it.” She touched her face, her scar. “I barely remember her or life with her – only flashes. Swimming. A bicycle crash. You.”

“ _I_ did? _I_ sent you there?”

“You had to.”

“...That means...I'll see her again.” A light came into his eyes.

Silja frowned, thoughtful. “I can't say for sure. I don't remember how I came to be with you.”

“You met me as a child?” He turned over the fact in his mind with a sort of wonder almost verging on being pleased.

“Yes.” She paused. “It was Adam. Or...almost Adam. I remember because of...because of his – your - face.”

“Of course. Scars even uglier than this one,” he remarked gloomily, pointing to his neck. “Unforgettable.”

“I wasn't afraid of you,” she assured him. Trying to remember that time made her feel almost sick; the moment when she fully understood she would never see her mother again was as clear and as vibrant as if it had happened yesterday. But the memory of Adam from then wasn't tainted with the same confusion and pain. She remembered feeling intimidated, but never unsafe. She remembered feeling interested. Interested in his odd face, interested in the still-human eyes. Interested in the way he was interested in her.

“Perhaps you should have been,” he said darkly. “Perhaps I'm at the root of your every horror.”

“None of it has to happen again. This is the last time.”

“I want to believe that. But I've been lied to so many times, hoped so many times only to have those hopes trampled. I'm not sure I believe anything can be fixed, or anyone can be saved. Perhaps the only salvation is for it all to end.” He sighed, the air draining out of him until he seemed empty. “Sometimes I can feel myself...becoming him.”

She rose from the bed and approached him. “Adam said you needed someone to talk to. You're not alone anymore, you have a sister. I'm here.”

He stared at her, his mouth parted slightly. “My sister.”

“You can tell me.” She took one of his hands.

“I...” He shook his head. “I hate him. But I'm beginning to...to understand him. There's a part of me that wants to...just let go and embrace the inevitability of him. I'm so _tired_ of fighting it.”

“It's OK.”

“He...didn't feel anything. He was dead inside, so detached. I suppose I long for it, in a way. I don't want it. I don't want any of it.” He looked at her sympathetically: “I know you don't either.”

“It has to be you. You're the only one who can save us. You _can_ do it, and you will.” Her other hand slid up his arm, and she noticed him wince. “What is it?”

“It's nothing.” But she tested the sensitivity and it was obviously very painful. “I took a jolt from the machine the other day.”

She pushed up his sleeve until she could see the injury. “These bandages need to be changed.” They were pink, worn and slipping off. It wasn't surprising that he wasn't taking very good care of himself.

Jonas protested, but he eventually helped her remove his vest and shirt until she had full access to his arm and he was bare-chested. She tried not to stare, but the sight, even dim as it was in the candlelight, stirred her hot - even more so than she might have guessed it would. She gently unwrapped the dressing and tossed it away as he sat at the edge of the bed. “Where is this water from? Is it sterile?” she asked, carrying his wash basin over.

“Nothing is sterile here.”

“Tomorrow you should clean it again, more thoroughly, with boiled water,” she replied, using a rag to gingerly dab the burn. “It will heal faster if you keep the wound moist with some kind of ointment.”

Jonas kept a roll of bandages in his room, and she used it to tie a new binding. “Not your first time,” he observed.

“No. We all had some experience with first aid in the field.”

She checked to make sure the bandage would stay in place, and her hand lingered on his arm. He looked down at the point of contact, and then up at her, meeting her eyes. Silja felt the energy in the air - and the energy in her - shift. “When was the last time you were touched?” she asked quietly, lifting her other hand to his face and palming his cheek, her heart breaking for him. This man was so damaged, so broken. They all were. But it was etched across him. He wasn't raised to be hard like she had been...he was sensitive. Or, at least, he had been once.

“I've been alone for a long time,” he admitted in a whisper. “Every good moment has been fleeting.”

There was something like hope in his eyes, and as he leaned almost imperceptibly into the touch, she felt compelled to drop down to her knees in front of him. “Have you guessed why I didn't want to tell you I was your sister?” He regarded her warily, stoic, but trembling ever so slightly. She was nervous too, though she didn't let it show. She pushed herself up higher on her knees, leaning her body in towards his until their faces were only a couple of inches apart. “Martha was your aunt, wasn't she?”

Would he resist? Was the taboo too much? Only a small part of her balked at the knowledge that he was her brother; the desire overwhelmed it, _enfolded_ it.

He didn't shy from her advances, though his expression was still uncertain. “Martha...”

“Is dead,” Silja finished for him. “They both are – or soon will be.”

Silja wrapped her arms around his neck and he met her embrace with a hungry kiss, the reminder of Martha's death seeming to spur him on. She worked one of her hands up into his hair, and she felt him gripping her back for leverage, his fingers digging into her skin through the flimsy fabric. Her lips tingled, bruised, as he withdrew.

“I've grown old,” he said dejectedly, his eyes searching her. “You're so young...”

She brushed his now-unkempt hair out of his face. “I only see Jonas.”

They hadn't known each other well. Though he had spent eight months in her time, their personal encounters had been few. But she had always known he was out there, had looked for him and thought about him. Had even been tasked with keeping tabs on him. Several times she had tried to convince him to join with her group – brief conversations, casual, but meaningful for her. But he had been stubbornly resistant, insistent on his independence – except when he needed food. He had asked them for provisions more than once – usually asking Silja directly because he had learned she would always give it to him. In front of Elisabeth she had had to pretend he did not interest her as much as he did, lest Elisabeth worry he would lead her astray. Perhaps if Silja had been more open then...

They had learned very little about each other, and yet she had always felt that they had connected somehow. This felt like the answer to a question that had been asked in those days.

He kissed her again and she melted into it. She hadn't been touched either...not like this. Not with passion. Not by someone who _needed_ it.

She began to push him down and he scooted back and made room for her in the small bed next to him. She didn't worry about pregnancy or any of the other things one might normally have to think about in this situation – whatever happened had already happened, and needed to happen again. It was out of her hands.

His skin against hers after they stripped off her chemise was a delight she hadn't anticipated. All of her experience in the past had been clothed and detached. But she felt Jonas falling into her, drowning for the moment in her. It was more than two bodies meeting.

Her fingers ran over the uneven, scarred skin of his back and he closed his eyes.

They removed his pants, and he pulled up the blankets so that they were under them together. She ran one of her heels up the back of his leg after he had laid himself on top of her to show him that she was ready, that she was sure. He grasped hold of her with intent and she yielded rapturously, whispering his name into his ear.

///

They spent the night together in his bed, naked, a mass of entwined limbs. In a bed so small there was hardly any choice. She woke once, enjoying the feel of it, just before sunrise. When she opened her eyes for good, an hour or two later, he had already risen. He was dressed, and sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, watching her. It unsettled her at first, but her body still hummed happily from the feel of him inside of her and the rush of skin against skin.

She hadn't even been certain that he had ever felt any attraction to her back then, let alone that finding out she was his sister wouldn't change whatever he might have felt more than 20 years ago. But she had been able to sense how much he wanted her, in spite of it all.

“Tell me more about her,” Silja said, propping herself up on her elbow.

“She was...human.”

“You said she disappointed you.”

“Adam talked to me once about a loss of naivete, a loss of innocence. I had no idea how naive I still was, as recently as only two years ago. I thought my mother was perfect. The anticipation of seeing her again – it only made sense that I had put her up on a pedestal. But of course she wasn't. I couldn't forgive her for having an affair, for cheating on my father, for not loving him as much as I wanted her to. I couldn't forgive her for not being the person I wanted her to be.” He regarded her sternly. “Ulrich isn't your father, is he?”

“No.”

“Who was your father? Did my mother marry him?”

“They weren't married. My father was Egon Tiedemann, Bartosz's great-grandfather. Or so Adam said.”

“Claudia's father. So you're Claudia's sister too.” Jonas crossed his arms, dismayed by the new information, and suspicious.

“I've never met him. Or Claudia. I don't think I ever will.”

“You can't trust her. I thought I could, but she lied to me. She tells as many lies as Adam does.”

“ _I'm with you_. My daughter – she's with you too.”

Jonas turned thoughtful. “Who is she? Have I met her?”

“Her name is Agnes.”

Jonas was silent for a moment. “I did meet an Agnes, in 1921. A child. It might have been her. My niece...” He shook his head. “She was one of the first people I saw after I left you. I remember thinking she looked like you, but I thought I was just scrambled from the wormhole. And maybe regretting that I would never see you again.” Jonas paused. “I should have said goodbye.” He darted Silja a significant look and she received it with a forgiving nod.

“What was Agnes like then?”

“Quiet. Intense. Observant. Pretty.” He chewed the corner of his lip. “Kind of like you.”

Silja smiled. “She sounds wonderful.”

“Noah-” He seemed to have a revelation, but he refused to share it with her, though he stared at her with a sort of incredulity: “What we know is a drop; what we don't know – an ocean.”

The morning was getting on; she rose, still nude. And for half a second he indulged in the sight, before turning his face away with an expression of shame. “Did Adam tell you what we would-what would happen?”

“No,” she answered, putting the chemise back on. “But he did look at me in a way I didn't quite understand.”

He opened the door and made sure it was clear, then sent her across the hall for the rest of her things. “They will be eating soon.”

Fully dressed, having helped him return the room to its unused state, she waited with him at the backdoor until Magnus and Franziska had crossed the grounds into the dining area.

“Whatever you may choose to tell Bartosz in the future,” Jonas said, “he can't know about this. Any of it. He would resent you for it, and me. He's already had to deal with divided loyalties. Martha...”

“I won't tell him.” Her gaze found his. “The sooner he marries me, the better it will be. I don't have much money.”

“Maybe you will be happy,” Jonas replied quietly, stiffly. His manner had changed overnight, he was more aloof, restrained. But she could sense a note of jealousy.

His expression was taxed, jaded. He didn't seem to think he was going to see her again. “I grew up without any family. And now I have a brother.” She reached out and touched his healthy arm. “We're both here now,” she whispered comfortingly.

He continued to look at her like a man who had lost everything, and expected for that to always be so.

As she slipped out and ran across the open area to a grove of trees, she turned and look back at him. They exchanged one final look, before he went in and shut the door.


End file.
